No Place Like Home for the Holidays
by i-must-go-first
Summary: It's the annual LAPD holiday party, and no one is having a good time. Angsty Shandy one-shot, but does feature a cameo by The Closer's Brenda Leigh Johnson and assume the possibility of a past Brenda/Sharon relationship. I don't want to be tarred and feathered for false advertising.


**No Place Like Home for the Holidays**

**Author's note: This is a Shandy story. Do not be alarmed. **

**For those of you playing along at home, Brenda/Sharon is my OTP, but I'm not averse to the idea of Shandy, either. So this is my take on the progression of Sharon and the lieutenant's relationship. The story assumes past potential for a Brenda/Sharon relationship that (in the world of this story) never happened. If that repels you, this ain't the fic for you.**

Sharon is definitely not in the mood for a party.

The LAPD's holiday gathering, held annually in any one of a dozen giant hotel ballrooms that is always stiflingly hot from the combined body heat of the city's men and women in blue, complete with questionable dining options and a cash bar, has never been the captain's idea of a great time. But then, she does love this time of year – loves it with a vengeance that sometimes frightens her children – and is accustomed to being a good sport. As the head of a division, her attendance is expected; and now that her name is associated with Major Crimes rather than Internal Affairs, she gets more friendly smiles of greeting than hostile glares.

But this has been a miserable week, a miserable month, for the police in the national news, and the captain's heart is heavy with it. Grand jury decisions that she couldn't support, even with her love of the police as an institution and, especially, as individuals, in Ferguson and Staten Island; and waves of protest across the country. She sympathizes. She knows better than perhaps anyone else inside the police force that brutality, prejudice, and corruption are realities, and no matter how much she'd done in FID, she's never felt that she could do enough. She also knows that most cops are good, honest people laboring to protect their fellow citizens and do the right thing, and that every single one of them will feel the sting of the backlash.

Gone is the festive enthusiasm she brought to last week's outing to _The Nutcracker_, although her little black dress and the companion at her elbow are the same.

"Wanna talk about it?"

She shakes her head and Andy nods. His quiet understanding draws a quick, appreciative smile from her, more a quirk of her lips.

Anyway, he gets it. The mood in the Murder Room has been especially grim over the last five days.

He doesn't push. Brash, loud-mouthed, sarcastic Lieutenant Andrew Flynn never pushes her, and it is one of her favorite of his qualities. It isn't even a holiday miracle. She has known him a long, long time – longer than he has known Louie Provenza – in many different guises, and it gives her genuine joy to see him reaching a place at which he is at peace with himself. Without that ever-present veil of anger, other aspects of his character can emerge. It fits him, as if he is finally comfortable in his own skin. There can be some benefits to aging, after all. Aging, compassion, and taking those twelve steps seriously.

"Thank you for accompanying me this evening," she says rather formally, glancing over at him.

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world," he cracks. She emits a single snort and sips from her glass of $7.50 chardonnay.

"Taylor's Christmas tie at four o'clock," he adds, and she turns slightly. This time she smiles with real amusement. Frosty the Snowman doesn't do much for the Assistant Chief's dignity. They have already done the obligatory meet-and-greet, during which she kept her eyes strictly averted. The way Chief Taylor had drawled, "And Andy, what a surprise to see you here" while looking meaningfully between the captain and the lieutenant should have raised her hackles, but it hadn't. There is absolutely no rule about being friends with members of your squad. There's not even an explicit prohibition against dating an officer of junior rank, only against showing favoritism, and Darth Raydor doesn't play favorites.

She's also not dating Andy Flynn, but that hardly matters since everyone seems to think she is.

Well, everyone except Andy himself. As long as they remain on the same page, she's good; and she's very glad not to be enduring this evening alone. Amy is still green enough to have chosen to attend, and she has dragged Cooper along with her; and for some ungodly reason Mike's wife is fond of these things. Her gaze skims over the two of them standing near the buffet. The rest of her detectives and their support staff had the good sense to stay home.

"We've been here almost two hours," she murmurs. "We can leave soon."

"Can we go get some real food?" Flynn asks, and Sharon nods as her stomach rumbles. Andy is the vegetarian, but mass-produced sushi is not exactly her thing either. As her green eyes continue surveying the crowd, she imagines the entirety of the department brass felled by salmonella.

She smirks when she catches sight of newly-minted Deputy Chief Fritz Howard conversing awkwardly with Chief Pope, and then her smirk freezes. Her grip on her wine glass tightens automatically.

Just when she'd thought the worst part of the evening was over.

Brenda is definitely not in the mood for a party, especially not a party at which she is surrounded by the men and women who used to be her colleagues and who are now her husband's. The looks and whispers are bad enough, but the feeling that her territory has been usurped and she is here as some sort of relic, on display so Will and Taylor and all the rest can watch her rust, is even worse.

She has, of course, made no secret of her feelings on the matter. Fritz is becoming increasingly annoyed with her. She is annoyed with herself, too. She told herself she was coming to be supportive, a good wife – it seemed the least she could do, now that they spent more than three weeks of every month on opposite sides of the country – and she isn't being supportive at all. She is petulant, impatient, and in the fifteen minutes they've been here, has gulped down one and a half over-priced glasses of mediocre Merlot.

She can't quite admit to herself that there is another reason she wanted to come tonight, a very particular reason. As the head of Major Crimes, she'd spent seven years ignoring Will's insistence that she was expected to be at the holiday party; but she knows her successor is not the type to ignore such a directive.

Brenda is still mentally insisting that she isn't looking for Sharon Raydor when she catches sight of her; and then, instantly, the former deputy chief knows exactly how many kinds of a liar she is. Her heart leaps and begins to pound painfully, and her mouth goes dry. It is a response not dissimilar to the one she had when facing a worthy opponent in the interview room, but stronger – much stronger. She hasn't seen the older woman in nearly three years, and dear Lord, the sight is like a punch in the gut. It knocks the breath from her lungs. The black fabric of the captain's dress clings to her, showing off her curves and an indecent amount of long, lean leg, but Brenda can't tear her eyes away from the woman's profile and the fall of her hair against the curve of her neck.

Brenda has several uninterrupted seconds to study Sharon, time measured by the intervals between the beats of her frantic heart. Brenda Leigh has always been a talented liar, and she has been lying to herself all this time; but now that she is actually confronted with the other woman, she can't keep it up.

She has waited three years for this moment, and she didn't realize it until now.

Their eyes meet. The space between them, and the people inhabiting that space, seem to vanish. Raydor's expression doesn't change, but even at this distance, Brenda sees her eyes widen and grow darker. She looks stricken.

A waiter steps in front of Brenda, obscuring her view, and holds out a platter of something fried and unidentifiable. She fights the urge to knock the whole platter to the floor, craning her neck to try to see around him as Will uses a toothpick to place three of the greasy things on a napkin. She is vaguely aware that Fritz uncharacteristically declines; but then, he has been watching what he eats lately.

At the moment she doesn't give a damn about her husband's possible concern with middle-age spread, and cranes her neck so violently that he asks, "What are you looking at?"

"I thought I – Captain Raydor -" she stammers.

Will scowls around a mouthful of whatever, asking, "She here with Flynn?" and Brenda is not the least bit surprised that the department scuttlebutt Fritz had mentioned to her with great amusement has made its way to the top floor.

Brenda had scoffed and dismissed the rumor. There was nothing less likely than a romantic relationship between Sharon Raydor and Andy Flynn. They detested each other.

Except that maybe Brenda hadn't been able to dismiss the rumor so completely, because unlikely things did happen, and Andy had never seemed to detest Raydor quite as much as he should have. Brenda herself had detested the captain in the beginning, and then –

And then what, exactly? And then nothing, because Brenda had sacrificed her career in order to collect a very unauthorized sample of Phillip Stroh's DNA. Brenda is not fond of self-examination, and only now does she admit that the "nothing" with Sharon Raydor is a very big _something_ that looms larger in her daily life than she has ever cared to realize.

She smells her perfume first, a light citrus scent that she doesn't remember ever having consciously noticed but is now able to identify immediately. Brenda's eyes and nose sting and she feels like she has been sucker-punched again.

Ever polite and politic, Sharon greets Will and Fritz first, briefly, before turning her attention to Brenda. Still her expression doesn't change, the polished, professional smile remaining in place. Her green eyes tell another story.

"Hey, chief," Flynn greets her with his crooked grin, and she manages to smile and reply, "It's just Brenda now, remember?" while she waits for the other woman to say or do something.

"Brenda." The low, smooth murmur flows over her, and the hand clutching the glass of Merlot trembles. "I didn't expect to see you here. Are you home for the holidays?"

"Yes. Home for the holidays," she parrots inanely, smiling so brightly that her cheeks hurt. "I – I thought it'd be nice to see some familiar faces." _Just one face_, she corrects silently, eyes locked with the captain's. "How is everythin'? Everybody? Fritzy keeps me updated on what y'all are up to."

"Then you already know," Sharon points out, and Brenda feels like even more of an idiot.

"Rusty, he's doin' well?"

The captain relaxes a touch, her smile warming. "Rusty is wonderful. I'll tell him you asked about him."

Brenda nods too enthusiastically, her ponytail bobbing. "Please do. And Lieutenants Tao and Provenza, and Detective Sanchez, and Buzz – and Lieutenant Flynn, I heard..."_ I heard you were screwin' the Wicked Witch, but I don't believe it_. "I heard your daughter got married." For a split second she tries to remember if she'd known that Andy had a daughter, but she doesn't care because Sharon is standing _right there_, and she isn't saying or doing anything, she's just _standing there_ looking calm and perfect and _Sharon_. Why is this woman, whom Brenda knows so well in some ways and hardly at all in so many others, the one person in the world who can reduce her to a state of near incoherence simply by standing there and doing nothing?

"Well," Sharon says, and pauses.

"Well," Brenda repeats. Instead of two powerful, adult women, they are both acting like gawky teenagers. It is uncomfortable. Fritz isn't paying enough attention to be uncomfortable, but Andy is. It's awkward. The undercurrent between the two women is so powerful that you'd have to be blind and deaf, or a deputy chief, not to notice it.

"We're heading out, but I'm so glad we got to say hello. Brenda, it's wonderful to see you, really."

Sharon isn't rushing, but Brenda is moving in slow motion. She feels as if she is mired in thick, gooey molasses. Before she can properly respond, Sharon has said something to Andy and moved off in the direction of the ladies' lounge. Brenda hesitates only a second, and then, with a similar gesture, follows. Brenda left Sharon Raydor behind once without saying any of the things that needed to be said. She can't make the same mistake again.

Sharon dawdles for a few minutes in the restroom, washing her hands so thoroughly that they will be chapped later, finger-combing her hair. She considers reapplying her lipstick, but that would send the wrong message. She rolls her eyes at herself, pivots on one very high heel, and marches out into the corridor.

It isn't really a corridor, but one of those vaguely purposed spaces that dot all hotels: there is a grouping of furniture, a telephone, potted plants. It is empty, of course, as such spaces always are, and at this hour it is cast in shadow.

Well, it isn't completely empty. Brenda is leaning against the wall, just as Sharon had known she would be. The captain stops in front of the smaller woman and meets her eyes, waiting.

"Captain – Sharon – I couldn't let you go like that, without tellin' you –"

Brenda breaks off as if she hasn't thought this through. Of course she hasn't, and Sharon has never seen her stammer so much. It's quite clear that Brenda Leigh either doesn't know what she needs to tell Sharon, or can't say it.

Sharon swallows. "Goodbye?" she suggests with unwonted gentleness.

Brenda nods. Her eyes are huge. "Goodbye," she agrees, her voice catching. Sharon knows she should leave, but she doesn't.

The blonde takes a small step away from the wall and into Sharon, their bodies just barely brushing, and fumbles for both of the older woman's hands. Sharon laces their fingers and closes her eyes, sweetness and pain coursing through her. Her grip tightens and she squeezes Brenda's small fingers hard enough to hurt them both.

"Brenda, I have to go," Sharon whispers, her voice coming out rough because there is too much emotion trapped in her chest.

"Not yet, not yet."

Brenda sounds frantic. Sharon can't resist her. She never could.

The kiss is their first, at least three years overdue, perhaps longer. It is chaste rather than passionate, their lips brushing and lingering because neither of them can handle any more. Neither of them breathes. Brenda's lips part on a whimper and she presses more firmly against the taller woman, who remains as still as a statue.

The kiss burns, not in a pleasurable way. Sharon's extremities tingle hot and it feels like acid is eating through her stomach lining, and yet she can barely process the feeling of their lips actually making contact. How like the universe to give her what she had so desperately and shamefully wanted only when she no longer wants it.

The universe? No, just Brenda – and Sharon. Sharon is not so naïve as to think she could not have reached out and taken this years ago, if only she had allowed herself. But she is not the type ever to have allowed herself.

There had been moments – no, not even moments; instants – when Sharon had felt sure the two of them had an unusual connection. She'd suspected that, at least on some level, Brenda was aware of how the captain felt; once or twice she had even thought that she read desire in those dark eyes, and her heart had forgotten how to beat. A few times Brenda had shown her genuine if reluctant appreciation for her unwavering support. But more often, and up until the very end, the deputy chief had treated her with thinly veiled contempt, as if she didn't even rate as a supporting player in the cast of characters buzzing around Brenda Leigh. Sharon Raydor, downgraded from nemesis to minor annoyance.

She recoils. Stepping back, she barely stops herself from demanding _why_ with the shocked pain of a hurt child. Why, after all this time? Why would Brenda want to hurt her like this, to reopen a wound and make her shed fresh blood?

She is arrested by the chalky pallor of the other woman's face, the dismay in the lines of her slack, open mouth.

What she reads in Brenda's wide eyes is not cruelty or deliberation, but shock and a desperation for something Sharon instinctively knows the blonde woman can't name. That makes it worse, somehow, the knowledge that, even if Brenda had set out to humiliate the captain or get some kind of revenge, that isn't what had ended up happening. More likely Brenda had no intentions at all, but had acted without thinking.

Sharon's stomach clenches so hard that for an instant she thinks she will double over. Now she knows, and she wishes she didn't. That horrible, tormenting, wonderful feeling that had gradually grown and grown until she'd been afraid it would consume her – perhaps Brenda hadn't experienced that. But she had experienced something; and, under other circumstances, they could have _had_ something.

It is so destructive, so selfish, for the younger woman to waltz back into her world and give them both a glimpse of what might have been and never will be. Not only because the fates won't allow it, but because Sharon refuses to go back to that place ever again – that wild, scary, out-of-control place she could only escape through rules and regulations and shoving her hands into her pockets and watching the other woman's inappropriate displays of physical affection for her husband.

Brenda had left without even saying goodbye. That had been the cruelest blow; she hadn't even rated a farewell, not even a specific mention in the letter the former deputy chief had given to Will Pope. Sharon remembered standing in his office, reading it aloud with trembling hands and tears in her eyes. The captain had worn a porcelain mask throughout that long workday, and then had gone home and sobbed out the agony of heartbreak and the death of a hope she had never allowed herself to admit harboring. Brenda had gone on to make more time for the living, and Sharon had instantly become the ghost of a dead past.

And that had been the kindest thing that Brenda had done, because Sharon, very much alive, had been reborn. She had been burned alive and risen from the ashes, phoenix-like. In the chaos and craziness that had become her life since taking over Major Crimes, Sharon had again found her sanity. She has grown and changed so much in these last three years, with the result that she feels more like herself than ever. She feels authentic. And she is happy; she is content with her life.

Two years ago, probably one year ago, what has just happened would have drawn her right back into the giddy misery of those last days with Brenda Leigh Johnson as a tangible presence at the LAPD. She is calmer and more centered now, and she doesn't want to burn again, so she will decide not to. She will make it that simple. She will have compassion for herself.

And, she thinks, living in the present moment again and looking directly into Brenda's still-stunned eyes, in doing so she will have compassion for the younger woman, too. She will be kind.

She finds and squeezes Brenda's ice-cold hand. "It's good to see you." Her low voice is painfully earnest. "Take care of yourself."

Their eye contact continues for a few seconds, and then Sharon disentangles her fingers and walks away. After she has taken several steps her heart begins to pound and her knees to wobble, delayed adrenaline surging through her as her lower brain tells her body to panic. Her heart tells her to look back, but she remembers the story of Lot's wife and keeps walking.

She needs to be the one to walk away this time.

Brenda wishes she had found the grace and wherewithal to say something, anything; to tell Sharon it was good to see her, too, and that she is the one who needs to take care of herself, because Brenda has a very safe desk job and she can't bear the thought of a world without Sharon Raydor in it.

Like last time, though, she couldn't say anything. The sounds of the party a few yards away ebb and flow around her – forced laughter, clinking silverware. She calls herself thirty kinds of a fool and a coward. Once again she has found the courage finally to do something she should have done years earlier; and once again it is too late. That look of sad but resolute finality Sharon had given her – there is no arguing with that. No wheedling or pleading or manipulation.

The tears that refuse to come make her eyes gritty and dry. She takes a huge gulp of her Merlot and fights the desire to run away, straight to the airport and onto a plane and back to Washington. She has no one to blame but herself. So instead she will go back to the home she no longer really shares with the husband who no longer feels like a husband, and burn cookies and play Christmas music and play at being what she knows she is supposed to be. And then, in a week, she will go back to takeout and long hours and her efficiency apartment in the District and be who she really is, who she will always be.

She knows instinctively that Sharon will make a graceful exit, Andy Flynn by her side. Brenda tramples down the masochistic part of her that yearns to go watch him help her into her coat – because, ever the gentleman, that is exactly what the lieutenant will do – and see her lift her long, lustrous hair from beneath the collar. She will not allow herself that one last glimpse to lock away in the recesses of her memory. But she doesn't need it. She won't forget how painfully beautiful the older woman looks tonight, or the tenderness in her mossy green eyes before she had turned away for the last time.

Brenda tilts her head back and swallows the remaining contents of her glass. She will go out to the bar and get another drink, and Fritz will give her that silent, disapproving look she knows so well, and they will never talk about it.

Brenda will make sure Fritz has Captain Raydor and Family on their Christmas card list.

She laughs out loud, bitterly, because it hurts too much not to.

Sharon knows she has schooled her features into a passable mask; Deputy Chief Howard hadn't noticed anything when she'd returned to Andy's side. She also knows that the lieutenant sees through it.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asks in an unusually low murmur, lifting her hair from beneath the collar of her wool coat before she can reach up to do it herself. His fingertips brush her skin lightly, not lingering. The touch doesn't burn. It's comfortable. She feels a measure of normality return.

She murmurs back a negative. So he knows. She has always suspected that he did, and this very brief exchange has confirmed it. Many people have made the mistake of underestimating Andy, especially back in his wilder days, but she has never been one of them. Little gets past him.

He doesn't say anything else until the valet has brought his car around. She is glad, and glad he's driving tonight – His argument had been that she lives closer to the venue, so it didn't make sense for her to drive out and get him; and he'd refused to meet her there because he didn't want to have to make conversation without her if she was late (she is never late). She isn't a huge fan of walking into crowded rooms alone either, and the quiet moments with Andy are the best anyway, when they are relaxed and he makes her laugh until her sides ache.

They're not laughing tonight.

"You okay, Sharon?"

She hums, tilting her head back and looking at the road ahead. "I will be."

Saying it makes her feel a smidge better, because when she hears the words aloud, she knows they're true. She will be fine.

Content for now with the answer, Andy focuses on driving.

She had expected to feel embarrassed, but finds that she doesn't. She is only relieved to have all her cards on the table. Her terrible marriage isn't the whole story, and she has long sensed that Andy just _knew_ that, because he knows her well enough to know that she wouldn't hide behind a twenty-year separation for no reason. She has been ravaged by love like the land left in the wake of a slash-and-burn campaign, and she will never allow that to happen to her again.

That doesn't mean she will never allow herself to love again. Finally, she can say that with confidence. If she keeps carrying a torch for an unattainable blonde, her arm will fall off.

This evolving _thing_ she has with the lieutenant, it's different from anything she has ever experienced before. It is gentle and comfortable and fits like an old sweater, and while that might not sound romantic in a teenage Romeo and Juliet kind of way, it sounds wonderful to her. She can acknowledge that it has evolved, and be content to let it continue evolving. There is no rush.

"Are you still hungry, or –?"

"Would you mind just taking me home, Andy? I -" She cuts herself off before the trite "I'm tired" can fully form and confesses, "It has been a very strange evening. I'd like some time to process it."

"Of course not."

He sounds worried, but doesn't ask for any form of reassurance. That makes her even more determined to reassure him. Seeing Brenda tonight, having the other woman's body briefly pressed against hers – finally getting what she had wanted for so long... Yes, it had been like prodding an old wound, and a familiar pain had flooded through her body. That wound, she realizes now, has not reopened; it has proven itself to be healed, forever marked by scar tissue and a peculiar ache triggered not by the weather or physical activity, but by pronounced drawls and tacky cardigans.

They've pulled up in front of her building, and Sharon turns her head against the seat-rest to meet Andy's eyes. They are framed by lines of worry, but for her he smiles tentatively, as if afraid to hope. "Are you free for breakfast?" she asks.

He raises his eyebrows. "You'll have to ask my commanding officer, ma'am. At the LAPD we don't work bankers' hours."

Her breath chuffs softly. "You skipped dinner; you'll need to eat. Nine o'clock?" She unfastens her seatbelt and opens the door, reaching down with her free hand for her small black clutch, and only looks over casually for his answer. It is a foregone conclusion.

"Make it 8:30," he says as she steps out onto the pavement, because he is an early riser. She never gives him a chance to open the door for her. "The Original Pancake House?" He has named a Los Angeles institution, the one place that has the power to induce Sharon Raydor to eat more than one pancake. She nods. "I'll meet you there at 8:15," he continues. She lets him get away with it, because he'll be up at five and famished by then. This is all part of the routine, the rhythm they have established.

She likes it. She thinks she could dance to it.

Sharon looks back, flashing a smile over her shoulder. Smiling isn't easy but it isn't as hard as she thought it would be. "It's a date," she responds, and thinks, _Maybe it will be_. Not because it has to be, or because she has been coerced into it, or because she is ruled by uncontrollable passions; but because it is her choice. So, maybe she will choose for it to be a date.

And maybe that wouldn't be so bad.


End file.
